Frugal Friday: Halloween Wreath

Busy, busy day yesterday but better late than never right??
Last year I sought out to make a cheap version of those fabric wreaths you see everywhere. This one is almost free!

I used a metal hanger and formed it into a circle. It doesn't have to be perfect.

Then I took a new black trash bag & cut it into strips.

Tie the strips in groups of 4-5 depending on the thickness of the bag.

Once the whole hanger is covered start fluffing the strips by pull them in opposite directions. 

Embellish it how ever you like! Fake web, spiders of any size, letter spelling out spooky are just some ideas.

I made this for under $5 and it has lasted two Halloweens so far..

"Green" Painting.

Enolah loves to paint but she's only two so it's not like she's creating master pieces yet! In fact half way through her painting time she starts painting her finger nails instead of the paper and spills the brush water. The work she did is ruined and I have to throw it out. I noticed the other day I'm throwing away a lot of paper from her constant painting sessions! So I decided to try something different.

First I tried a clear cutting board, one of those cheap ones from Ikea.

It worked but I still had the water to clean up.

So I tried a disposable baking tin that would have just gone in the trash.

Held the paint and contained the water she loves so much to play with!

Weekend wrap up

Friday night we took Enolah bowling for the first time at this super cool bowling alley called Splittsville. We were not anticipating how much she would love it. She was screaming and cheering the whole time, Sam and I were laughing so much we hardly remembered to take pictures.

Saturday Sam and I spent the afternoon in Frederickburg again for round two of my tattoo at Jack Browns Tattoo Revival. Justin the artist has relocated to the area and I'm excited to hopefully get something else done by him before we move! This time he added background the the piece and shaded the tree and bird some. Next time he'll finish shading and add white highlights.

Enolah spent the day at our neighbors on her first outing in panties like a big girl! Only had one accident and poor girl cried because she thought she had to go home after.

Sunday is football day for Sam. He's out watching the game while the three of us spend the day at home!

Frugal Friday: the knot headband

I was up with Soren this morning who was having trouble going back to sleep. I've caught a bug and I'm almost certain he has a little bit if it two. Being a sick mom is the worst!! Any who I decided to watch last nights episode of Glee and dance him back to sleep. If you don't watch the show you're missing out! If you do, don't you love the new characters?! Marley is the new Rachel Berry for sure and I am loving her style. She rocks a knotted headband of sorts and I decided I needed to make one.

I headed over to pinterest and searched knot headband. Several pins came up but I clicked on this tutorial. The video is so helpful!

I used one of the many shirts we have in a pile to go to Goodwill and just cut strips starting at the hem. I decided to braid my strips, reffered to as "t-shirt yarn" in the above tut and used a small hair tie to hold the ends together.

The finished product.

For fun I searched "knot headband" on etsy and found a similar headband to get an idea of how much I saved making one myself!

One t-shirt makes a lot of "yarn" so I whipped up this one too, it's just one long strip crisscrossed at the top. 

Crafting with Enolah

It's raining today, so I decided to spend the morning knocking off another project from my crafting to do list.

I got this idea from a good friend who made a similar countdown for her husband who is deployed on a MEU (fancy acronym for being deployed on a ship). Any who she made a fisherman on a boat & hung fish from the boat representing the weeks he would be gone.

I loved the idea of a countdown that made sense to the child so I thought of this!

Enolah got to do one of her new favorite things, cutting. 

She also learned to glue today!

Weekend Wrap Up

This post is coming to you from my iPhone app! No time for anything creative this weekend. Sadly only two more weeks left with Sam so we spent the weekend mostly at home, enjoying each others company.

My little Soren man is approaching his 6 week growth spurt which means lots of eating, sleeping & cuddles.

Enolah is doing wonderfully with potty learning. She uses the potty whenever we're at home and she's awake! Next steps are to teach her to pull down panties and to use the big toilet so we can leave the house without a diaper!

We recently became friends with our neighbors and went to their house for a cookout. They have a little girl who will be three in October and the husband will also be attending drill instructor school. We're so excited to have familiar faces South Carolina and that the girls will get to go to school together. They have so much fun with each other.

I've randomly been wanting to watch one of my favorite movies Pleasentville lately so all of this weekends pictures are in black and white.

Frugal Friday: The picture frame collage

You've all seen 'em and we all love 'em! I've wanted one for years now. The picture frame collage.

Some are more uniform like this one from my friends blog.

And some are just empty frames and mirrors like this one.

I think what held me back from creating one of these was cost and availability. I knew I couldn't go out and buy a dozen uniform frames from Ikea and make one. I also knew finding eclectic vintage frames out in thrift stores was going to be difficult, if not impossible, considering this is such a huge trend right now. So I decided to play around with what I already had decorating the house and created this!

Sure it's not as design savvy as the ones above but it was free and free is my favorite. The pre-made collage frames were a steal at $9 a piece from Walmart. The large mirror was $5 from a garage sale, the small mirror was $1 from the Dollar Tree, The "L" and smaller decorative frames were all from Big Lots. 

I bet you have enough frames and decorations hanging around your house to create one of these yourself! I'll have to wait until after the move to get mine on the wall (per the Mr.'s request). 

Best banana bread ever.

It's the best because it's easy and delicious.

If you know me then you know I can NOT bake. My baking casualties include but are not limited to, forgetting a cup of flour in a brownie recipe, putting a tablespoon instead of a teaspoon of salt in chocolate chip cookies and turning a recipe for chewy peanut butter cookies rock solid.

That being said I love banana bread and last year a good friend gave me the simplest recipe, I haven't screwed it up yet! 

Ingredients:

1 cup of sugar
1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup butter
1 egg
3 mashed bananas
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda in 1 tbs water

Cream butter and sugar. Add beaten egg, bananas, vanilla and flour. Add baking soda and water last.
Cook in a greased pan at 350 degrees for 50 mins.

I try to cook with Enolah regularly. Yes she is only two and she's not learning much yet, it's mostly just fun for her but it forces me exercise my patience. Hopefully all of these cooking sessions will allow me to be a patient an understanding mom when she hits the crazy teenage years!! 

 She hardly even eats the bread but like all kids, will destroy the spoon and bowl! Luckily she doesn't have to fight her brother for them yet. 

Manic Mondays

Mondays are always rough for Enolah as she adjusts to Sam being back at work. She is one serious Daddy's girl!! Today started off with a fit when I opened her door instead of Sam. Another fit when after yelling for Daddy, checking both our room and downstairs for him, I told her he was at work. Yet another fit when I refused to carry all of her blankets and stuffed animals from her bed down to her playroom (something Daddy always does for her). All before 9 am.

So little over a month ago I implemented "No Nap Mondays" because I was tired of fighting her to take a nap when she was already in a nasty mood to begin with. Instead I try to keep her very busy and happy and let her fall asleep whenever she does or doesn't. It's been working really well, Tuesday comes and we are back to our regularly scheduled program. Today's activities consisted of an art project, playdate and learning to use the potty.

For those who don't know Sam will be leaving in 3 weeks to attend Marine Corps. Drill Instructor School in Parris Island, SC for 11 weeks. I'm almost certain Enolah will be a mess so I've planned a handful of things to help her understand and cope while he's gone. Today we worked on one and two countdowns I decided to do.

Yes, I gave my two year old scissors and no, there were no casualties.  

          

Now about that potty. We are doing what's referred to as potty learning. I just haven't been very proactive about it. I decided today was a good day to get serious. She has complete understanding of what the potty is, when she needs to go & was even asking to use it fairly frequently a few months back but then lost complete interest. I knew getting her out of diapers and into big girl panties was going to be 1) messy, good thing we have hard wood floors and "leather" couches! 2) time consuming and 3) require that we spend full days inside. Today we were diaper free from when she woke up until 3pm when she started looking tired and I anticipated she would pass out soon. I put the potty in her playroom and asked her periodically to sit there and try to pee (God forbid I set her down on it myself). She had just one "accident" that I think was a result of her not getting it all out in one sitting. I hope to do this all week, more on how it all goes later!

Potty learning, playing with friends and missing Daddy is tiring work. 

Wonder-Fall

Fall has recently become my new favorite season. I think moving to Virginia and having kids had a little something to do with that. For us Fall brings: 1) A break in the nasty humidity which means more time outside 2) Halloween which means creating super fun costumes for the kids 3) The obvious changes in the trees, which brings me to the subject of this post.

We recently went to the Prince William County Fair and were walking through the arts and crafts building. A hall full of fun little crafts entered by children from the area. One kid had entered an acorn wreath. Just your basic foam wreath form with acorns haphazardly glued all around it. I saw it and had to recreate it! 

For fun I searched pinterest to see if there were any pinned with no luck and then I googled it and found this tutorial. I switched things up just a bit on mine. So here's how it went. 

I made this a family affair. Wrapped up the baby in the gira my new favorite wrap. Brought the mister to reach the high branches and Enolah to scavenge on the floor, she had a blast by the way, "collecting nuts," as she put it.

For reference it takes almost a full produce bag full of acorns to cover a standard size wreath form (sorry didn't get a picture of that). The straw wreath form suggested in the tutorial worked great but it does cost $5.99 regularly at Michael's without a coupon. 

I used my sweet $5 salad spinner from Ikea to rinse and quickly dry the acorns. 

Baking them is seriously a MUST considering I left mine to sit on the deck for a day (because with a newborn my crafting time can be cut short at any point) and found a creepy worm thing had crawled out of one of the acorns. I suggest you use a foil baking sheet. These things can leak a sap of sorts and I'm glad I didn't get it on my beloved Pamered Chef stone baking sheet. Bake at 350 for 15 mins and try not to forget about them because they'll split in half. They can be safely baked with the caps on and it is easier to remove the caps after that have been baked if you have to pick any from the trees like we did. 

I attempted to glue mine on in a spiral which proved more difficult than expected. I also left several of mine acorns capped and sprinkled them in with the uncapped ones. I the acorns it natural. I didn't want to paint it because I wanted you to be able to tell these are acorns, after all this is a Fall wreath. Because we picked some from the trees and some from the ground the acorns really vary in color. I'm so pleased with the way it turned out!

 

Points to note if you plan to create one of these: 1) This thing weighs a ton! 2) You need about 10+ glue sticks. 3) Pick extra or keep your extra acorns because some are bound to fall off due to the weather or basic handling. 4) Consider sealing with lacquer and using it for a few Falls to come because it is very time consuming.